The campaign contains three and a half missions, the last one is only partly finished, althought all quests in that mission are able to be finished. It is an rpg-like, commando-mission-like campaign, with no base building and so on. The four missions shall carry you over 30 levels, with various methods to upgrade the hero.

It is an early version, the story elements are not much developed yet, but the missions are supposed to make sense. I have not yet linked the maps togheter, so you wont get to carry "your" Thale (the heroine) over to the next mission, but on the other hand, all missions are availible to you from the start (so if your bored with one, just move over to the other).

I want people to test the campaign for me. I want to know about the bugs (obviously) and about the gameplay, is it fun? What can I improve? and so on.

Thank you for your input

EDIT: I have updated the version, it now concludes the final mission "misty mountains" (or rather the second final version, i plan to make one more mission to the campaign)

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Last edited by trondor on Sat Sep 22, 2007 2:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

andriejj wrote:Can it be compared to Med. MapGuy's campaigns? Are cinematics short or long?

If the answer will be good, I'll test it

Why those doubts? Because I played 3 campaigns lately, they were toprated at hive and still- they SUCKED. Nothing in comparision to Joe's Quest, Deandra's Tale, Mordork's Quest...

Cinematics are short and few, there is an intro cinematic (that is not skippable) which are done in one minute or so, but I have keept the cinematics to a minimum (althought I might add more later, especially to the second mission "shores of Alver".

To compare it to Med. MapGuys would be pretentious of me, althought I have worked hard on the detail of the terrain, and I have tried to make it fun to play too. Hmm, what if you open the map in the mapeditor and give it a glance befor you decide whatever or not it is worth your time

I watched the intro and played some of the second mission- received some missions outside the city, killed creeps, went to the city, went around the southern part of it, got to the dungeons of the magic tower, took a summon spell, started exploring caves.

Now my thoughts:

Intro- this part made me scarred. Terraining is terrible there, dialogs are even worse. Why the hell is the witch called Catwoman? It's not funny, it's only stupid.

Another thing that was supposed to be funny was that accident that happened to the guy. I know it was supposed to be absurd, but I just don't take it, I think it should be changed. It would be better if you made it so that he tripped over some branch or sth while talking with his girlfriend and hit a stone with his head and THEN fel into coma. This would also be quite funny, but more serious. The death anim fits it more. And it would give better possibilities- you would make Thale screaming his name and the screen slowly blacking out- and then, we would meet them at the witch's house. Thale would talk, the guy would lie somewhere near on the ground. Talking that he's alergic is overcomplicating this shit and makes it stupid, scaring the player off.

And one more thing, about art- the corpse appears on the ground when the guy falls down. It's possible to make that without the corpse appearing.

About dialogs- boring, not interesting, poor English, typos. Ask someone more fluent to them. The intro has to be made tip-top, to make the player like the campaign straight away!

1st mission. This suprised me, it was 10 times better quality than the intro. I like the floating numbers and letters showing damage, low hp or mana.

Terraining is much better there but it still could be improved. Try using weather effects, wind, dust on the ground, light effects. Use combinations of doodads to make impressive buildings or mountains- I think just playing Med. MapGuy's Mordork's Quest, watching the begining cinematics, could inspire you.

Crates and other destructibles- in some places, like near the windmills on a hill(very good terraining there!) are placed to make the terrain nicer. In other places, they contain(or not) items. Those which are placed to improve the outlook should be invulnerable or converted to doodads. That's my opinion.

Banish skill- I got no idea why it's there. It would make sense if Thale had a magic attack. But now, it doesn't fit her and other spells at all. The healing skill is good. One of the worst mistakes in RPG-style maps is when you can't heal yourself and gotta run through whole map to the nearest fountain. Heal was a good idea and synergises well with the summons.

Summons- I like the general idea, but they could be changed. If wolves need no mana for spells, why the other creeps do? They quickly run out of mana, there's only one of them, they attack slower. They are WEAK compared to wolves. Maybe make just some of their spells also have no mana cost?

And about the dungeons- why the heck is there an uber-high tower there, right of the library/throne room? It looks like a skyscraper in a cellar, lol.

MUSIC. Currently we hear human standard music in the background. MISTAKE. This campaign is supposed to be an ADVENTURE, and human music is dull and too lofty. If you want to use standard wc3 music, take orc pattern or night elven, they are more lively, but I would suggest importing something. Some film music would be the best- it could be LOTR, Pirates of the Carebean, Gladiator, something in that taste. Maybe you could think of something better.

Don't be afraid of using imports. This is a campaign, it can have more than 4 MB. Find some skin or model for Thale. The normal Jaina model looks, imo, too much of a fairy tale. Try finding something with more toned colours, not so damn shiny and trashy. Unfortunately, the only acceptable one I've found on hive was this:

About the intro. Well..Yeah, I'm sorry about that, I will try to make a proper cinematic once I get a hang on it. I probably should have disabled it, I just wanted to let people know that there is a motif to Thale's adventure.

I made the banish skill so that players can get out of combat and heal a bit, which should be necesseary on the wraith part of the city mission. Also it might be more important later in the campaign, when you face multiple targets.

About summons: I realise that the player need alot more information about the various types. The wolves dont require mana, however, there are long cooldowns on their spells. The other two summons can be summoned multiple times, and have a rather long duration. One reason the lava spawn has so little damage is that at the end you will probably have an whole army of spawns, as they both can be summoned and multiply by hits. But point taken, you need more info on the various summons.

skyskraper removed

I have actually thought about importing music, but it is still an early version. I have an old cd from 1991 which contains awesome music that I think might fit to the second mission "shores of alver", kinda druidic in a different way then generic celtic music.

I'll try to look for more models for both Thale, Big Muff and Freya (all heroes in the campaign)

One thing you will notice, is that I made the missions chronologically, so I think my skill in map making has improved during my work on this campaign. Take a look at the other missions too, they are a bit different then the first. Might surprise you.

And I want to point out that this is still a early version, I will polish it quite a bit befor any "release" if we're to call it that

Now the finishing of the first chapter. When you go out of dungeons, you don't have the summon spell, only the useless egg. You are no match against all those bandits which protect the road.

Find a key in the North-West- lol, the location was North-East. And in the next chapter, you made the same mistake, you should remind yourself where's East and where's West

Bugged bear quest- the furbolg doesn't remove the bear from your inventory, you can complete this quest infinite times by dropping the bear, going to near furbolg, receiving furbolg stone, dropping the bear and so on...

Now the second chapter. Big Muff there got no attack, low mana, too much spells. Make him the same Muff that appears in chapter 3 and 4.

Jaina has the second hero slot. That's really annoying, because when you check both heroes, Muff is the first. AGAIN- make him a summon or a hero summon.

Forked lightnings- 2 quests, from the druid and from the archer, for slaying trolls, give you forked lightnings as reward. Change the reward from archer or make it IMPROVE your forked lightning.

Banish and Blink have the same hotkey in chapter 2 and 3.

Chapter 2 has an UBER flaw/bug - when you reach level 18, the game ends. I didn't even had to defend that city against Krossan, lol. I had no quest with oges. I gained level 18 after killing Harpy Queen and game ended.

Healing Salve in chapter 3 doesn't tell it also heals mana.

Chapter 3. Fjordheim looks AWESOME!!! Good job!

Big Muff summon spell has a bugged colouring. Fix it

Weapon quest- there isn't enough of them or the pirates respawn too slow. I killed whole map and got only 16 or 18.

Make some quest with the siege of that uber city. People love such quests. Troops would attack Fjordheim from all sides(there are 2 gates right? It would be better with 3, but this could work too) and you would have to run from gate to gate, help defenders, repell maybe some flying waves which go above walls... That would be AWESOME!

Chapter 4- didn't really play it, just watched the map in iseedeadpeople. Terraining could be improved. I like the dwarves vs orcs war, reallly nice. As I said, people like AI fights between computers where you take one of the sides.

Now my opinion about whole campaign, what else should be changed. You should remake chapter 1 and 2. They stand out too much from chapter 3. Add some more interesting quests there, change the water and fire elementals summons- too much spells, they should be more concrete, like wolves or Big Muff in chapter 3. Chapter one is just running across whole map and killing creeps which just wait for you. Chapter 2 need some improvement in the terraining of the second elven base, the one in south-east corner, with the moon-priestess. I don't know how the pirate assault looks like there, because game ended too soon

Trondor, just make it so that the chapter doesn't end after you reach level 18. That's stupid. You earn that level, and you can't do anything more though you got half of the map unrevealed or didn't upgrade your heal spell for example.